


Hawwa in the Calligrapher's Shop

by Crazypreacher



Category: Ib (Video Game), Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, And Now For Something Completely Different, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fully Replaced Setting, Middle East, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:52:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7611583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazypreacher/pseuds/Crazypreacher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of kouri's Ib, except instead of a modern art gallery, this one takes place in a shop of a calligrapher in an unspecified Arab county.</p><p>An experiment in storytelling, the same story set in a different place and, probably, in a different time period, as well; although, at this point, it's almost an original story. </p><p>"The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour." - George Orwell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The only way from here is down

**Author's Note:**

> Who is who:  
> Hawwa = Ib/Eve (Hawwa is the Arabic - and Hebrew - name of Eve)  
> Georges (pronounced after the French fashion) = Garry (he is an Arab, and a native of the country, too; he is just named Georges. Probably has to do with him being a Christian)  
> Maryam = Mary  
> Selcuk (the "c" here is pronounce like a "j") Arzumanian = Weiss Guertena  
> The Lady in Red and the Blue Doll have been conflated into a single character, you'll see for yourself which one.
> 
> Also on the AU side, Ib/Hawwa is aged up, from 9 in the original to 12 here. I did it, because her adventures are slightly more hardcore on the emotional side in this fanfic than they are in the game.
> 
> The setting is deliberately ambiguous, but it was mostly inspired by Lebanon, ca. 1975, I think. So, if you ever think "why don't they just call/text each other?!", well, that's why :-)
> 
> Books that have partly inspired the story: "The Calligrapher's Night" by Yasmine Ghata  
> "The Calligrapher's Secret" by Rafik Schami  
> "My Name Is Red" by Orhan Pamuk
> 
> Dedicated to kouri and vgperson who brought us the original game, and to a lot of other people - alive or otherwise.

That Saturday was the last day Hawwa and her parents were supposed to spend in their country, as tomorrow they were leaving for Paris, where they were to spend a month with her uncle, her father's brother. So Hawwa's parents were in a hurry to see the last of their numerous friends and relations. They also took their daughter with them to by some new clothes for her. Her father was exchanging the news with his acquaintances and colleges in a coffeehouse across the street which ladies weren't normally admitted to, and her beautiful mother was engaged in an animated chatter with her friends at the counter in a patisserie where she could watch her daughter from. Hawwa was sitting at the window after being briefly shown to and appraised by her aunts, female cousins and the like. Her mother, however, didn't have to worry much, as Hawwa always did exactly what she was told to, like now, when she honestly tried not to fall asleep from boredom and growing heat by watching people on the veranda and half-listening to her mother talking to her friends and family.

In spite of it being a day off, both the veranda and the parlor were half-empty. Hawwa wondered why - people growing less on money? On the veranda, only two tables, which were standing close to each other, were occupied - one by two grown men, another by a solitary young man - probably, a university student. It was he who caught Hawwa's eye. The young man had long hair falling down to his shoulders and a very long scarf of blue silk. One end of the scarf fell down on his chest, the other was thrown behind his back. He was reading a small book and kept looking up the time on his pocket watch. All three men on the veranda were dressed smartly, expensively and after the Western fashion.

Hawwa wasn't the only one whose attention was caught by the young man with the scarf. A cleaning woman had apparently decided to take advantage of the fact that the customers were scarce and was moving among the empty tables with her broom. Judging by her long, loose and colorful dress and the headscarf that covered her head, neck, shoulders and all of her hair, she was a villager, a newcomer to the city. The cleaning woman kept looking up at the young man with a book as she was doing her job. Once he looked up and met her eyes, but looked away at once. After looking at his watch yet again, the young man suddenly rose, preparing to leave. The cleaning woman who at that moment was right next to the table with two men turned awkwardly as he was passing next to her. In turning, she knocked a cup off the two men's table. The cup broke.

The four - the cleaning woman, the young man and the two customers - all froze for a split second, not yet fully understanding what happened. The young man was the first to come to his senses. He pretended to have tripped and in his fall tore the tablecloth off the table, knocking over everything that stood upon it. This led to predictable results: the men got furious, he started to apologize profusely with a wide smile. Hawwa couldn't hear the words through the window, but their expressions and gestures made the conversation rather clear. The cleaning woman who everyone now forgot about - which, of course, was the young man's intention - took this opportunity to scamper off to the other end of the veranda. The culprit of the entire thing, still beaming, entered the parlor, approached the counter and asked a flamboyant woman behind her about the cost of broken cutlery. After getting the answer, he reached for his vallet, seemingly undaunted by the price. Hawwa turned away. Her eyes fell to the newspaper rack, and on one of the front pages she read: _Selcuk Arzumanian charged with blasphemy - calligrapher remains silent..._

"By the way, do you happen to know the way to Abu Nuwas' monument?" she heard the young man ask the woman.

"Oh, it's very close by. Walk out, turn right, pass Arzumanian's - you know, the calligrapher - pass his shop, pass two more houses and finally turn left."

"Many thanks," and with that, the young man left the patisserie.

Hawwa would never expect that a shop of a blasphemer famous enough to get into a paper would be right around the corner. The girl apparently didn't even notice it as she was passing it with her parents. Of course, now she grew interesting, and that eternal interest of the abominable and the forbidden was only multiplied by her boredom and her tiredness from sitting in the same position for a long time. Hawwa had, in fact, been to Paris already, if only for a week. But even this short time was enough for her to notice how much more freedom of movement and behavior the girls there had, and the fact that she dressed and basically looked like them only made that disparity more painful. Now, as she was going to travel back, those memories were becoming stronger.

Of course, if the calligrapher's shop would lie two blocks away or some such, she wouldn't dare, but it was right around the corner. Hawwa looked in her mother's direction. The woman was calm and happy, engrossed in a conversation with her friends and female cousins. The woman behind the counter was grinding coffee with her back to the entrance. No one is going to notice me, Hawwa thought and slipped onto the veranda - luckily the young man left the door slightly ajar. He probabyl was in a hurry.

The two man that were sitting there had already left, and even the cleaning woman had withdrawn. Hawwa glanced warily at the coffeehouse across the road to make sure her father wasn't at the veranda and couldn't see her, then she got off on the ground, reached the corner clinging to the wall and turned right.

The calligrapher's shop was indeed right beyond the corner and looked like a calligrapher's shop should - a porch, an entrance, a signboard. Hawwa was somewhat disappointed and was already going to turn back, when she suddenly noticed the door wasn't locked. It was closed, but there was a gap between the door and the frame, yet not a sound was heard from the shop. The girl, surprised, came up the porch and looked inside. The parlor was empty. The door on the other side of the room was flung wide open. The floor of the both rooms was covered with scattered scraps of paper and writing supplies.  


The girl stepped inside tentatively and closed the door behind herself so that no one would see her from the street. The paper on the floor must be what was left of his works and drafts. The girl tried to walk and heard the glass cracking under her feet - it was a shattered ink bottle. Hawwa, of course, knew nothing of calligraphy, but even so it was painful to look at the remains of those works, torn and covered in ink. Watching her step and treading carefully, Hawwa crossed the parlor and looked into the room across the entrance - it must have been the workshop. The room was in the same state of chaos - all cabinets were open, all drawers were pulled out, all tables overturned, and not a single whole sheet of paper in sight. All surfaces were littered with drawing supplies - bamboo pens, brushes, quills, some of them broken, some not.

 Amidst all this litter Hawwa didn't notice at first that she was standing on something small and hard, that didn't feel much like a pen or a brush. She leaned over and picked it up. The girl could swear it was a bullet. She did know how it was supposed to look, she just never thought she would have to hold it in her hands.

Then she noticed something else on the floor, something she didn't notice at once under all the paper. A long dark-brown trail stretched across the floor of the parlor and almost up to the shop entrance. Something must have been dragged here - something rather large and bleeding.

The trail led to the stairs which led to the second floor. Hawwa froze. But there was no sound in the entire shop. No one was there and probably hadn't been for quite some time. Now that she was here, she had to find out what happened and how. Maybe, there could be something of importance on the second floor?

As she was persuading herself in this fashion, she rose to the second floor. There was yet another room with rows of tables. It looked like the workshop, but was smaller - maybe, a study room? It wasn't too damaged - probably because it held nothing of interest for the attackers. The trail of blood, however, led to another room. Its door was also flung wide open. Hawwa looked behind it and saw the plate with the calligrapher's name. It must have been his study.

She expected to find something particularly gruesome in there, but it didn't look different from the rest of this place. Here, she was up to her ankles in torn paper. Apparently, the attackers didn't just destroy his calligraphies, but also everything that contained writing, including the ledger accounts, the notebooks and so on. The writing table was in disorder. On its top was a perfectly clean - probably new and unused - ashtray. There was blood on its edge. Next to it was a book in a leather binding, or rather what was left of the book. There wasn't a single page left intact, just paper scraps along the book's spine and the flyleaves. On one of the flyleaves was written: "Verily I state that God dwelleth..." The inscription wasn't finished.

Hawwa shrugged and stepped back. All of a sudden she noticed that the window in the study that had hidden behind the curtains was no longer there, instead, there was just a wall. The girl waved her hand in front of her eyes, but nothing changed.  
To test her guess, Hawwa exited the study and looked into the study room across the corridor. The windows are also gone. Even if one supposed there _had_ been no window in the study, and Hawwa had worried too much and started imagining things, a study room certainly couldn't have done without windows, could it?

Now the only source of light in the second floor were the lamps. Hawwa didn't see how and when they had been lit. _And, more importantly, by whom?_

As if in response to this question, a voice sounded from the first floor. Hawwa froze, then began to look around herself frantically. There was nowhere to hide, except behind overturned desks, but that would hardly prove effective. A pocket knife lay on one of the desks. Hawwa grasped it without fully understanding what she was doing. It was still better than nothing, although hardly helpful against the bullets.

Luckily, there and then the girl understood that even the knife wouldn't be necessary. Firstly, the voice in the first floor belonged to a woman, secondly, it was calling Hawwa by name, and lastly, Hawwa knew that voice very well.

"Hawwa, where are you?" her mother was calling her. "Come here, we have to leave!"

Dear God, the girl dreaded to think what grief she'll receive for running off. But if before the displeasure of her parents was the most dreadful thing for Hawwa, after seeing what happened at the shop she knew there were worse thing than parents giving you grief.

Hawwa ran to the first floor, entered the parlor and froze again. The entrance disappeared, just like the windows on the first floor, and the blood trail ended right next to the solid wall.

"Hawwa?" her mother's voice called her again, this time much louder. "You're looking the wrong way, sweetheart. Look at the floor, there's a secret exit down there."

Hawwa sat down, digging through the torn paper and trying not to look at it out of pity.  It took her some time, but finally she managed to clean the door of the hatch that apparently was on the floor.

"Open it, darling," her mother's voice said.

Hawwa doubted if she would be strong enough, but when she pulled the handle, the hatch opened by itself, so she didn't have to make any effort. Behind the door were stairs. They weren't unlike those that led to the shop's second floor, but these stairs were hewn in the rock. They led so far below that Hawwa couldn't even see where they end. A draught was coming from the hatch.

"Well done, sweetheart," her mother's gentle voice sounded from the darkness, now perfectly audible. "Come, don't be afraid, I'm waiting for you below."

Carefully Hawwa began to descend. The stairs really were enormous. It was dark all around, but the more the girl descended, the more her eyes were getting used to the darkness. Somewhere in the middle of the stairs Hawwa finally saw where they led. It turned out to be a shore of an underground lake. Dim light was falling from somewhere, but the crack it fell from was so high above and the cliffs around were so steep that it was not possible to reach it. Two strange creatures were looming in the half-light like two white specters by the water, and next to them there was a sign. The lake must have been very wide, because its other shore could not be seen in the darkness.

Hawwa's mother was also nowhere to be seen, and she wasn't calling her daughter anymore, either. Still standing on the stairs, Hawwa called out for her, first in a whisper, then louder, but there was no answer. The girl turned aroudn and ran up to the hatch, but just as she did, the hatch closed by itself and the stairs smoothened into a stone slide. Hawwa, taken by surprise, slid down, but, thankfully, the stairs weren't very steep, so her way down wasn't too fast and her landing relatively smooth. She didn't even smash her head on the rocks or impale herself on her own pocket knife she was still holding. It would come in useful yet, it seemed.

The girl lay still for some time, then she slowly rose to her feet, slowly pulled down her long pleated skirt, straightened her jacket and adjusted her cloche hat and slowly proceeded to the sign by the water. The sign read: "Choose your ferrybeast, if you wish to return home in safety." As for Hawwa, she definitely wanted to return home in safety. She guessed those strange white creatures who didn't even seem to notice her were the ferrybeasts.

One of them was a white bird the sizes of at least three houses. Even now Hawwa couldn't help but notice how beautiful it was. As if aware of its own loveliness, the bird was preening its own feathers with its massive beak. It had an air of arrogance about itself and paid no attention to anything around. The feathers were giving off a strange clanking sound, as if they were made of metal.

The second ferrybeast was a fish at least the size of the bird next to it. It was difficult to be more precise about its dimensions, though, because one could only see its enormous head towering over the water. The fish was as ugly as the bird was beautiful. The fish's eyes were like cracked pearls, its thin, whitish skin had burst open here and there, and the cartilage was showing through the holes. Its uneven teeth were protruding from between the huge, flabby lips.

"Choose your ferrybeast", the sign said. Of course, the bird looked prettier and safer, not to mention much cleaner. On the other hand, Hawwa hadn't read much in her short life, but from what she had read, she did remember at least one story, in which a fish carried a person - Yunus - inside its own belly in full safety. As for the giant birds, the girl only remembered some stories of the roc, and even so, she didn't remember them all that well, but she thought that bird didn't like it very much when someone tried to ride it.

 Even as she was descending down the stairs, Hawwa felt a strange headache. Now she understood why - the water in the lake was actually ink, and its heavy smell was poisoning everything. A bit longer, and she will fall over where she stands. She had to get out.

Hawwa approached the fish and looked at it questioningly. The fish opened its maw, through which at least three grown men could pass, and the girl got inside.

On the inside the fish looked notably better then on the outside. The walls of its stomach (or whatever the organ that Hawwa was now in was called) were lined with bookcases. The fish closed its maw, but it was still light in this "room", as it was illuminated by lanterns, woven out of nerves and filled with phosphorus. The only downside was that Hawwa had nowhere to sit on, but she didn't care about that right now. The bookshelves were densely stacked next with dozens of volumes, except for one of the shelves, on which there was a lonely gap. Under the gap there was a sign. Hawwa approached and read: "The Book of Life and Death", S. Arzumanian". That must be for that book in his study, the girl thought. He didn't have chance to finish it.

A book next to the gap caught the girl's eye. It was Nizami's "The Treasury of Mysteries". She opened it at random and saw a story of the doctors' contest. Most of the page was taken up by the miniatures which were intended to illustrate the accompanying verses under the pictures. In the first miniature two doctors were standing before the padishah, the one in a pink kaftan and the other in a blue one. The first doctor was proffering a pill of acid-green color to the other one. In the second picture the doctor in the blue kaftan was holding a pill that was also blue and looking clearly alarmed. On the next page the doctor in the blue kaftan was smiling happily. The pill was gone - apparently, the green pill was poison and the blue one was the antidote. In the next miniature the doctor in the blue kaftan was holding a rose in his hands. The flower was as pink as the clothing of his opponent, and the doctor was leaning closely to the rose, as if whispering something to it. On the next page he was proffering the rose to his opponent, and on the page next to it the doctor in the pink kaftan was lying dead with the rose in his hands. He must have been so terrified of the spell that the other doctor whispered to the rose that he died without waiting for the spell to work, if it would work at all.

Only when the phosphorus lamps went out did the girl notice that the fish stopped and opened its maw for the passenger to come out. Hawwa put the book where it was and went ashore down the fish's jaw as if it were a ramp. She turned and thanked the beast, but it only closed its maw and submerged under water again with a look of indifference.

In the cliffs next to this new shore Hawwa noticed an empty bird's nest. It was so huge it could only belong to the white bird from the other shore. It was built out of different and the most unexpected materials - mostly paper, but Hawwa thought she also noticed bloodied shreds of fabric, likely human dress. She even thought the pattern on the fabric was familiar, but right now she couldn't remember where she had seen it before.

The girl shuddered. It seemed she had made the right decision by choosing the fish. She had to get out. There were also stairs on this shore. Like those on the other, they were hewn in the rock and led upwards, and also like on the other shore, there was a hatch at the end of the stairs which opened as soon as the girl touched it. Hawwa got out, thinking she would be back in the city or in the shop. But she was wrong.

Hawwa was now in a room inside some building. This room easily could have been one of the rooms in the shop, its stone walls, floor and ceiling bare. But the room itself didn't look much like a workshop or a study. It was fairly spacious, but didn't have any furniture, in fact, there was nothing but a huge patterned carpet spread from wall to wall. One edge of it was next to the hatch the girl appeared from, the other was next to the door in the wall across the hatch. A sheet of paper was pinned to the door. It seemed to have some writing on it. The room was lit by a lamp under the ceiling, just like the rooms in the shop.

To read the note on the door, and also to exit, Hawwa intended to cross the room and stepped on the carpet. At once the carpet gave a grinding, ear-piercing shriek, and that which the girl thought to be the pattern stirred and rose, appearing to be some creature which was lying on the carpet before. The creature very remotely resembled a woman. The dirty brown curls of the "pattern" turned out to be its long, matted hair, its red skin was the same color as the carpet, and its face, if it could even be called that, was so disfigured that it was only natural to mistake it for a crude, or stylized, drawing. It only resembled an actual human face as much as the masks made by peoples dwelling south of African Sahara.

The ghoul - it was Hawwa's best guess as to what this creature was -  grabbed the girl's ankle, while continuing to shriek angrily, and knocked her over with unexpected force - even though it was of great height, the beast looked unnaturally thin. Hawwa couldn't hold back the scream when falling. Taken by surprise, she also dropped her knife, and it was sent flying to the far corner where she couldn't reach it. And next moment the girl screamed even louder, because the ghoul's teeth, sharp as a saw, dug into her leg, obviously with the intention of biting through and tearing off a lump of flesh.

Hawwa felt something round and hard against her ribcage. It was the small mirror inside the pocket of her jacket. Having no better ideas, the girl pulled it out, praying that it hadn't broke when she fell, and tried to catch the light of the lamp with the mirror and send it into the ghoul's eyes to blind her. She didn't manage that, but she managed something else instead. When the ghoul noticed the girl moving, she rose her eyes and met face to face with her own reflection. It terrified her so much that she shrieked again, let go of the girl at once and hid in the far corner, shaking with fear and whimpering.

Hawwa rose, trying not to step too hard on the bitten leg - luckily, there was no blood.  Still holding the mirror in front of herself, the girl picked up the knife, came up to the door and read the announcement on it:

_A notice to all visitors: we have reason to believe that the final and best work of Master Arzumanian is preparing to desert its own creator in this hour of darkness upon him, us, and our country. Should you encounter said work and prevent its escape whilst causing no significant harm to it, we shall be infinitely grateful to you._

After what just happened, Hawwa didn't even give any thought to who "we" were or wonder how a handful of letters on paper could desert anyone. The girl opened the door and passed into the next room. Luckily for her, the ghoul was still whimpering in the corner, not noticing anything.

The next room was much more interesting. There was a door in each of the four walls, and every door, except for the one Hawwa entered through, was guarded by a very large cat. The animals were made of ink-drawn letters, which didn't at all get in the way of them wagging their tails, stretching themselves and purring from time to time. Now the announcement made a little more sense to the girl. But these works of the calligrapher certainly weren't in a hurry to run off anywhere. They weren't noticing Hawwa, either (granted, she also couldn't spot any eyes on them), or if they did, they clearly found her beneath their notice.

The girl thought she was making out individual words in the cats' bodies. She came a little closer to the animal that stood at the door left to the entrance. The black letters which were comprising the cat's body were so altered they barely resembled letters at all, and since Hawwa was still at arm's length from the cat, the inscription was barely legible. Hawwa was moving from one spot to another, tilting her head this way and that, trying to get a look at all sides of the animal. Finally the cat itself must have started to be amused by her. It sat down and wrapped its tail around its legs, probably observing Hawwa in turn. Finally the girl managed to make out the following: "Behind me lies the forest of grindstones, merciless as the wheel of fate itself."

Hawwa walked to the next door that was opposite to the one she came into. It was guarded by a cat of red color. After many attempts the girl managed to read: "Behind me lies the way into the valley of warmth." The final cat that was at the door right from the entrance was green and read: "Behind me lies a spiral, and each curve leads to new trials."

"The forest of grindstones" definitely didn't appeal to Hawwa. "The valley of warmth" sounded nice, but a bit ambiguous - the girl was just carried over an underground lake, after all. What if that door led deep under the earth, into the hotter part of it? "A spiral leading to new trials" sounded vague, but at least didn't imply an immediate and painful death. Besides, the green color of the cat was soothing and gave hope.

Hawwa came closer to the door right from the entrance. The cat gave way, indicating no emotion. The girl opened the door and saw a winding staircase, leading upwards. The staircase looked fairly sturdy, and at its upper end was another door. The girl congratulated herself and began ascending. It took her some time, but finally she reached the other door and entered it.

The door led to a corridor. It was, or at least, seemed very long, as it was poorly lit - only one small kerosene lamp was giving off light above the door the girl came through, and the other end of the corridor was lost in the darkness. The very look of the corridor invoked melancholy - its walls, floor and ceiling were absolutely bare, and as far as one could see, there were no other doors leading from the corridor, either.

Hawwa barely took one careful step when something brightly red jumped at her from the darkness with resounding barking. It was a dog of unclear breed and rather large size, and like the cats, it consisted entirely of painted letters. The dog started to jump around the girl, barking , trying to put its paws on her shoulders, obviously to knock her off her feet. That obviously made moving rather difficult. Hawwa gasped with indignation and backed away with revulsion. The unclean animal, however, wouldn't recede, and the girl had no other choice but plunge her pocket knife into the dog. There was a sound of paper crunching as the knife went in. The animal wailed with pain. Growing bolder, Hawwa stabbed the dog a couple more times. The animal jolted a couple of times and fell quiet. The girl didn't even expect that killing the dog would be so easy. But Hawwa didn't have time to wonder or to feel glad, because the red paint the animal was painted with spurted right into the girl's eyes out of the last wound. She squeezed her eyes shut and after a while tried to open them, but couldn't. She tried to at least wipe the eyes with her fist, but it was no use - the paint had already dried and glued her eyelids together.

Barely catching her breath and damning everything and everyone, Hawwa felt the wall with her hand and slowly started to walk along the corridor, leaning on the wall for support. Her eyes were itching, but it was tolerable, and at any rate, she should reach the end of the corridor soon. There had to be some water and some cloth, or at least a rag, right?

  
In this state Hawwa obviously walked much slower than usual, so it took her quite some time to notice that the corridor hadn't ended yet. How large was this building? She hadn't encountered any door on her way, either. Hawwa walked a little more, then more, than more. The corridor wasn't ending, and there was still the same bare wall under her fingers. The itching of her eyes was turning to cramp.

In dead silence Hawwa walked further, and further, and further. She walking until she tripped over herself and fell. The girl tried to rise and realized she couldn't walk anymore.

Hawwa caught her breath and started to crawl back to the door she came through. Maybe, there's another exit somewhere? She would have to try and go down, back to the cats, and find it. The girl thought she would have to crawl back for a whole day - that was how long her walk down the corridor seemed to her. But she barely even crawled for ten centimeters when her fingers touched letters and a pool of oil paint. She extended her hand and felt a doorframe, as well. She was already back at the entrance. Yes, this was a strange place.

Suddenly the girl thought of something she should have begun with, all things considered. She tried to feel the letters that remained of the dog and make out what they said. Hawwa just hadn't expected the corridor to be so complicated, otherwise she would have done it much earlier. After a lot of toil and pain the stretched, curving, distorted letters became a set of directions: "Make eleven steps looking straight ahead, then seven steps with your left side ahead, then five steps with your right side ahead, then turn..." - here some letters were blotted out by the paint from the wound - "...wards and make the final three steps."

So the dog was running up to her to show her the way. And it was probably jumping and making so much noise because it was so happy to see the girl - anyone would be happy to see a living creature, if it spend all the time in this corridor. And this dog Hawwa butchered.  


The girl rose slowly, inhaled deeply, trying to pretend, to no avail, that her eyes weren't hurting, and began to follow the dog's instructions. After making five steps with her right side ahead of her, Hawwa stopped and thought. "Turn...", the calligraphy said. Turn to where? Hawwa spread both her arms to the sides and felt both walls, trying not to move an inch from her position or to lose control from all the pain, terror, hopelessness and weariness. As far as she could reach, there were only bare walls around. There was nowhere to turn.

The only idea that came to the girl's mind was "turn backwards". She tried to reassure herself that she could return to the entrance at any moment and that the worst thing that threatened her was going blind. Then she turned backwards, made three steps, stopped again, reached behind her back without turning and finally felt the doorknob. The girl didn't even have strength to feel happy, so she just pushed the doorknob and dropped into the next room.


	2. Layla and Majnun

"Oh, it's you!" cried someone Hawwa couldn't see. "I know you, I've seen you in the patisserie!"

Hawwa stopped, not so much out of fright or surprise as out of weariness and indifference.

"Please, help me!" the same strangely strangled voice continued. The man who spoke was obviously frightened. His words were overridden with strange, snake-like hissing. "I... My God, what happened to your eyes? I can't get out myself. I'll help you, I'll just need to get one of my arms out. Help me, I beg of you, I see you have a knife!"

Hawwa nodded, barely conscious of what she was doing.

"A little forward..." he told her. "A little more... more... Good, now stop. Try to kneel - you've got a beige skirt, but it's not very dir... Argh, damn you! No, not you, demoiselle. Reach out with your hand, the left one. Good, that's my right hand. Now reach a little higher... yes, that's a letter. Could you cut it?" The letter under her fingers felt like a tourniquet made of oil paint. It was squirming, digging into the unfortunate man's wrist and hissing, and when the girl touched it, it started to hiss even louder.

Very slowly Hawwa raised her knife.

"A little to left, that's my face here... Yes, yes, that's good, there it is... Cut it, cut it now!" As the cut letter filled the air with its hissing and screeching before falling silent, Hawwa understood that she had done everything correctly. "Now a little up, please, on the same arm of mine... Just please hurry, the wretched thing is trying to get my neck..." The girl cut the letter on his forearm.

"Good, now please give me the kn... Argh!" The poor man started to wheeze. Hawwa understood what happened and quickly ran the fingers of her left hand up his shoulder until she reached his neck. She clasped the knife in the fist of her left hand and set the fist against the floor, as she was trying to convince herself that she was only touching the young man to save him. Finding the letter wasn't easy, as it was hidden by surprisingly numerous layers of fabric. When she finally find it, the girl stood up a little, grasped the letter with her fingers and drew the letter away from the neck as much as she could. She raised the knife, but the prisoner snatched it away from her with the freed hand. Hawwa was grateful for that - she probably would cut his throat herself. Staggering, she stepped back a little and sat on the floor, but judging  from the frequent and loud hissing the letters were giving off, her new acquaintance was doing alright on his own. Finally everything fell silent. The invisible prisoner of the letters caught his breath and spoke to Hawwa:

"Thank you, demoiselle. I owe you my life. But... what did happen to your eyes? The paint? Well, that could be helped. Wait a little, please..."

The girl heard the gurgling of some liquid and felt the man carefully washing her eyelids with a wet cloth that was giving off a strange smell. First one of her eyes opened, than another. Strange as it was, she still hadn't gone blind. The strange liquid also stung her eyes a little, but that was nothing compared to the oil paint. In front of herself she saw the same long-haired, cleanly shaved young man from the veranda of the patisserie who paid for the broken cutlery. Behind him was a very spacious hall containing nothing except two doors, one of which Hawwa entered, and a huge calligraphy on the floor - a circle made of letters. The circle's diameter was approximately the same as the young man's height, and he was very tall. Once the calligraphy may have been a circle, but now there was a huge hole in its middle cut by Hawwa's knife, and the shreds of letters lay in disorder, powerless and scattered. They were painted with black paint, but even so the color black itself seemed to have lost its luster once they died. It was no surprise that the letter had a hard time finding the young man's neck - in addition to his think jacket and his shirt, he was also still wearing his blue scarf, although it was somewhat disheveled now.

"Is that better?" he asked her smiling. Hawwa nodded. "Thank you," he repeated. He was holding a flask with some liquid - probably the same he used to make his handkerchief wet.

"Please, take your knife. You may take the handkerchief, too - I have another. What's in the flask? Er... wine. I'm a Christian, and... Listen, the paint went dry, and I haven't seen water or anything else in here. What else could I do? Just don't tell your parents, please."

Hawwa looked at him silently, but that was enough to understand that she didn't approve of wine, not even in a situation like this. The young man just smiled back. The smile was anxious and sad, but also understanding. He closed his flask and hid it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Hawwa noticed that she was still holding his cambric handkerchief. It was rather pretty and had flowers and birds embroidered in its corners, but now it was stained with paint and wine. To pass off the awkward moment, Hawwa hid the handkerchief in her pocket.

The young man spoke to girl considerably colder, switching the subject abruptly:

"How did you get here?"

The girl explained, telling him everything that happened to her before she met him. The young man wasn't even surprised. He only nodded with an air of wisdom:

"Fascinating. I was going to meet... someone, and I had to pass the Arzumanian's shop on my way there. I noticed it was strangely quiet there, looked inside and saw everything... Someone must have decided to eradicate the heresy together with the heretic. Suddenly all the windows and doors were gone, and I heard the voice... except it wasn't my mother, but... the person I was going to meet. Funny, isn't it? Ha-ha. The rest was much like what happened to you, except I got into this room right away, I have just come, basically. I came through... wait a minute. No, this cannot be. I entered right through this door, I know I did! The same door you came through. But how is this possible? Some strange house it is."

The young man sighed and pointed to what once was a circle of letters on the floor:

"Once I stepped on it, the letters coiled around my feet and toppled me over. I didn't even see what it said. What do you think was written here?"

Hawwa looked closely at the remains of the circle and tried to remember the shape of the letters she was cutting.

"So you say, it could have been sura 112?" the young man asked. "Hmm, that's possible. It does say _"He begetteth not, nor is He begotten"_ , after all. It must have disliked a Christian being around." He laughed awkwardly. "How do I know what the Qur'an says? Well, I study Arabic Philology at the university. Would be strange to study it without the Qur'an, wouldn't it?"

To try and make peace, Hawwa said that her mother was also Christian, that she had also been to the university and studied philology.

"Did she?" The young man brightened up. "Wait, do I know her? What's her family name? Hm, I heard something, but never met one of them personally. Of course, all of us big-money Christians know one another, if only through hearsay. God, I'm a fool - of course, I saw her in the patisserie, too. She was at the counter. She looks a lot like you. I mean, you look a lot like her, you're even dressed alike."

He suddenly grew serious:

"We must get out of here, if you're ever to see her again. Speaking of which, what is your name? Hawwa? Hawwa... it's not often you meet someone with a name like this. A pity, it's lovely. I'm Georges. By the way, you've also seen the announcement about a deserted calligraphy, haven't you? Well, have you found anyone? Ha-ha, me neither. Alright, let's go, it's not safe in here."

Together Georges and Hawwa went up to the exit. After going through the door, they suddenly found themselves in a house of some small theater. They were standing behind the very last row, facing the stage which was scantly lit by dim stage lights, the only patch of light in this place. The faded backdrop depicted a desert landscape - reddish dunes beneath a pale blue sky. Specks of dust were floating in the air.

"That's a new one," Georges said. "I don't mind a bit, though. I love theater, although I haven't been there in ages. Do you, demoiselle?"

Hawwa's father didn't approve of theater - or music, or singing - very much. Hawwa shrugged silently.

"Oh, I see, you've never had an opportunity," Georges nodded smilingly. "That's alright. All in good time."

The girl and the young man split and headed for the stage along different sides of the house. On their way they were checking the walls and looking under the chairs, but found no doors or hatches. The inspection of the stage didn't yield any results, either, and even the backdrop, as far as they were able to see, hid no exits, just a solid wall. Hawwa noticed a note pinned to the cord of the curtain.

" _Leyla and Majnun_ ," Georges read aloud. "Hm... I think I understand! We have to play out the story of Leyla and Majnun on this stage, and then a door will appear somewhere!" Hawwa looked at him strangely. "Maybe you have other ideas?" No, Hawwa didn't have any other ideas. "I'll tell you the story, listen: once there lived... Oh, so you know it? I thought you were too young for love stories... Very well, come here please. You'll be Leyla."

He reached out for her impatiently. Hawwa backed away, obviously wary. Georges looked confused for a moment, then just as quickly found a way out:

"...but if you like," he went on, "we could do it another way - I'll be Leyla, you'll be Majnun. It will be even more interesting this way."

Before Hawwa knew what to answer, Georges found a patchwork quilt in a pile of rags which had somehow accumulated in a dark corner between the stage and the backdrop. He tied the quilt around his waist like a skirt. In the same pile he had also found a towel which he threw to Hawwa:

"And you put on this instead of a keffiyeh." Meanwhile he unraveled his long and broad scarf and put it on his head in the manner of a veil. With a blank face Hawwa covered her head with the towel without even taking off her cloche hat. Her eyes met Georges'.

"And there I was hoping you would smile," he said. After a brief silence Georges clapped his hands:

"Now, to business. Since there's just the two of us, I'll also be the storyteller." The young man stroke a pose and spoke with feeling:

"Verily, I, Leyla, have been beautiful in my youth. Clear as a spring was my song, light as the wind was my gait." In proof of that, the young man started to dance and sing an old love song:

_Once I saw you, walking, swaying,_

_Once I saw you walking, swaying,_

_All at once my heart went straying,_

_Aman, aman, aman, aman..._

When he started to sing, Hawwa actually started - he had a surprisingly fine singing voice. The girl stood in the middle of the stage and stared at her companion. He made for a surprisingly pretty girl.

Suddenly applause and shouts of encouragement sounded very closely to the stage. The actors froze and turned around nervously, but the house was still empty. Even in the last seats which were half-lost in the darkness no hint of movement was to be detected. Georges collected himself first and carried on speaking as Leyla:

"Many admired me for my beauty and other numerous virtues," with that he bowed to the first seats, just in case, "but my heart belonged to Qais, the one with whom I grew side by side," he pointed to Hawwa, whose expression clearly displayed her utmost contempt for the situation, "and fortunately, Qais loved me also." He looked pointedly at Hawwa.

After some hesitation she put her hand to her forehead and rolled her eyes. Apparently that would have to do for the portrayal of someone in love, and Georges went on:

 "He sought my hand," with a look of someone fulfilling an unpleasant obligation Hawwa pretended to stand on her knee, trying not to soil her skirt in the meantime, and reached out to him, "but my parents forbade it, for he was very poor. Upon their refusal my Qais lost his mind and was known as Majnun, the mad, the possessed one. He retired to the desert, where he spent his days and nights in wandering and composing poems of his love for me."

Hawwa walked to the other end of the stage and thumped herself on the chest with her fist a couple of times with a grave and business-like face. Then she took her head with her hands and shook her head from side to side. As if in answer to her poor acting, wailings of disappointment filled the house. Apparently, Hawwa, unlike Georges, failed to please their invisible spectator.

The young man hurried to redirect the attention to himself. After throwing a quick glance at the floor, he pulled off his quill skirt, wrapped it around himself like a shroud, lay down on the stage and went on:

"So great was my sorrow after being parted from Qais that I died from grief before I could see him again, even from afar." Now the spectator was clearly impressed, judging from how he (though, from the sound of the voice, it was more likely a she) filled the house with resounding sobs and whimpers. It seemed that they were coming not even from the first row, but almost from under Hawwa's feet. Georges was encouraged by it and continued:

"Upon hearing the news of my demise from the nomads, Qais made haste to see me. Once he saw that I was still as fair on my deathbed as I was in life, his heart broke. For years he was wondering the land around my grave until the merciful death came for him, as well."

Hawwa casually walked around Georges once and laid herself down next to him, trying not to think of what had been on this floor before. Immediately came a sound of the backdrop being lifted. Hawwa quickly leaped up and saw that there was a door behind it, as expected.

The invisible spectator applauded wildly and whistled happily. Georges raised and bowed with a smile. Suddenly the applause stopped, and the young man and the girl saw a thin, spider-like red hand show from the prompt box. Then another hand showed, then the face that Hawwa knew well - an ugly mask framed by tangled ash-coloured hair. It was the ghoul.

"Er... so this is your friend, I suspect?" Georges addressed Hawwa in an undertone. "You didn't mention she was a theatergoer..." The ghoul screeched with joy upon seeing Georges. "Well, I'm afraid we have no time for chatting with admirers."

The young man and the girl threw away their rags and raced to the newly appeared door. The ghoul emitted a scream of resentment and bolted after them, but Georges who burst into the room after Hawwa slammed the door shut, bolted it and pressed his back against it.

They caught their breath and looked around. This time the room they were in resembled some sort of a storage. The walls were lined with spools of transparent white yarn that were stacked one upon another. There also were strange devices - Hawwa didn't know what they were for.

"Those must be the devices for carding and spinning cotton - cards, drums, wheels, spindles..." Georges decided. Hawwa didn't know how the devices for carding and spinning cotton looked, so she had to take his words for it. But when she approached and took a better look at the strange yarn, she saw it wasn't cotton at all.

"This... this is dust," Georges said in astonishment and wonder. "Someone cards the dust here and makes yarn out of it. This is genius!"

Hawwa never thought a man could be so excited about yarn. Taking advantage of a quiet moment, she brushed her clothes. Surprisingly, they were almost completely clean - indeed, not a speck of dust went to waste in this house. She looked around the room. Three doors led out of the storage. Firstly, the girl headed for the one on the left.

"I've remembered something," Georges said, following her. "I think I read in one article that Arzumanian was declared a heretic for his words. I think he said that every man is in fact God and that you can awaken God inside yourself with all His power, including the power to overcome death and so on. Or something to that effect."

Hawwa stopped at the door, listening to him.

"A long time ago, there lived a poet, Mansur al-Hallaj. "Hallaj" means "cotton-carder"."

Hawwa did somewhat recall the name, but nothing else. At any rate, she failed to see what al-Hallaj had to do with anything.

"He was executed for the same thing. He said _I am the Truth,_ and therefore stated that he is God. How was he executed? Oh. I don't want to tell you, to be honest. It was too gruesome..." To put an end to the conversation, Georges took the door handle and opened the door. It led to a little cell. Seeing what, or rather who, was inside stopped them in their tracks.

The entire cell was cobwebbed from wall to wall and from the ceiling to the floor, and in the web a likeness of Georges was hanged. It was covered with gore, its severed arms and legs were carefully hung in the same places they would be if they were still attached to the body. The arms were spread wide, the eyes of the head had been poked out. The mouth was just barely opened, but it didn't seem to contain a tongue, either.

"...like this," Georges whispered, seemingly having lost his voice.

Hawwa didn't speak. She just fell senseless.

***  
When the girl came to herself, for a moment she hoped that she would wake up at home and all of this would have been a dream. But as soon as she had opened her eyes it became clear that it was not to be. Hawwa was in a small room, probably a closet. She was lying on something soft. It was a pile of tapestries and scraps of fabric. Many tapestries were unfinished - apparently, not only someone here spun dust, they also wove and discarded the unsuccessful ones into this closet. As far as Hawwa could see, the tapestries also pictured the calligraphies of some texts.

Apparently, the invisible weaver could also paint the dust yarn. With what? Ink, maybe? Other than tapestries, Hawwa also noticed scraps of yarn, sheets of paper with sewing patters and even some things that appeared to be the botched attempts at dressmaking.

Opposite her Georges sat on a similar pile of rags. His head was sank, but when he heard Haawa sit up on her improvised bedding, he looked up and smiled:

"Are you alright, demoiselle? I tried to revive you, but you wouldn't respond, so I checked this room. It proved safe, so I brought you here. I have to confess it wasn't easy - I have never carried children before, let alone children of your height. How old are you? Twelve? Well... I have to say, you're stronger than many those older than you. I'm not surprised you fainted back there, I'm surprised you only fainted now. You want to know how long you were unconscious? I'm afraid I don't know. My watch has stopped and it just will not start again, no matter how I try. You know, I suspect time passes differently here. They have their own laws here, time and space. Otherwise you and I couldn't have entered the same room at the same time out of completely different rooms."

Hawwa asked if Georges believed that Arzumanian had been subjected to the same treatment as the likeness of Georges in that room. The young man frowned:

"I don't know, and I do not wish to know. Please, you shouldn't think of such things, and... Wait, how did you say? The likeness of me? No... no, no, I'm telling you, it wasn't my likeness, it was... the man I was going to meet. One derwish..."

Hawwa could swear it was an image of Georges. He gave her a very strange look, then sighed heavily, drew his hand across his face and said:

"Yes, Hawwa, this is a strange place. We can only hope we'll see those we left behind again. I'll see that man, and you - your parents, brothers and sisters... So you're alone? Hm, that's strange. You say you had a little brother, but he died in infancy, and your parents decided their future children were doomed? How horrible. My condolences. What, you're not sorry and it's better to be alone?" He roared with laughter. "Well... I cannot say I approve of your opinion, but as someone with two brothers and a sister, I wholly agree. Shall we go? I don't know, are you ready? Then let's go. Back to our families."

They rose together and headed for the door.


	3. Where The Roses Grow

Hawwa was tense as she was leaving the room. She decided to do her best not to look in the direction of the door behind which a mutilated likeness of Georges, or whoever, was hanging. But she quickly discovered she needn't have worried, as the door was not there anymore; instead, there was just a solid wall. As Georges had said, it was a very strange place.

Now there was only one room they hadn't checked yet. Luckily, this time the door opened to a staircase that led back to the first floor. This time, instead of a winding staircase, it was just a regular one. There were a few flights of stairs, and they were fairly long. The young man and the girl descended and opened yet another door at the foot of the staircase.

This time the door led to a balcony of sorts. It encircled the walls of the vast hall in which they found themselves now and gave a good view of what was happening below - namely, a heated fight between two creatures, one huge and one small. The huge one was a serpent-like creature. It was made up of letters, just like the cats and the dog Hawwa met before. The small one was a girl in a emerald Bedouin dress. She was trying to get past the serpent and to the only door that seemed to lead out of the hall, to no avail. The serpent was barring her way. It was hissing angrily and swinging its head to be in her way, wherever the girl dashed.

 "I beseech you to let me outside! I need to, nay, I must leave this house! You have no right nor reason to detain me! Oh, do let me go!" The girl was pleading with the serpent, but it wouldn't listen.

"Another person!" Georges said. "And she seems to know the way out. We must help her! I believe, this time it falls to me to play my namesake, Saint George, and save the damsel from the dragon. Hawwa, would you lend me your knife?"

Hawwa gave the pocket knife to him. She remembered too well what happened the last time she tried to kill someone. But she still saw no way for Georges to get down - the door they came through was the only door to or from of the balcony and there was no steps leading down, to the hall, in sight.

"I'll jump down, it's not too high," Georges answered. "When I finish off the beast, you'll jump down, too, and I'll catch you."

Hawwa still wasn't sure about this, but Georges had already climbed over the railings and jumped down, landing right upon the beast's neck. The serpent reared up and hissed louder, but Georges managed not to fall. He plunged the knife right into the serpent's head. It started to thrash around in agony, the ink splattering all around, but its agony was thankfully short, and it died quickly. The girl in the emerald dress froze at first - apparently, she didn't even notice Hawwa and Georges as they entered - and they screamed with terror. As Georges was only just getting off the corpse of the beast, Hawwa decided not to wait for him to catch her and jumped down herself. She counted on landing upon the paper-soft rings of the beast's body and luckily did exactly that. She probably would like to read the words it was made up of, but in that very moment the girl in the emerald dress came to her senses, clenched her fists and jumped at Georges who was obviously greatly perplexed at this:

"You killed my friend, you wretch!"

"Your friend?!" Georges cried, jumping aside. "It wouldn't let you go! It was holding you by force!"

"He was my friend!" The girl ran up to the serpent's head, grasped the knife Georges forgot about in his state of shock and pointed it at the young man. "We would have made peace, he and I! You ruined everything!" 

"Peace?! Friend?! What if he bit you?"

"He wouldn't bit me! He does not bite! He was simply worried! He was afraid of losing me!" The girl advanced on Georges, swinging the knife, he fell back, and suddenly, a stone slab turned over under his feet, and he fell under the earth. The slab turned over on the other side, closing the hatch.

The girl in the emerald dress seemed as shocked at this as Hawwa. The latter ran to the slab and started to tap and stomp on the floor, trying to turn over the slab again, but without success.

"Forget about him," the girl in a Bedouin dress said, approaching Hawwa. "He will be fine, he is a grown man. There has to be another room down there. Surely, he just fell into it. He is fine. Is he your father, or brother, or uncle? No? Then forget about him. Come with me, the exit is close. We have to get out." Hawwa still wasn't moving, looking with doubt at the spot where Georges had just stood. "Come, now! Forget about him. He is a strange, wicked man. See, he has already killed someone. What if he attacks you like this, all of a sudden?"

Georges really was a strange man, Hawwa thought - drinking wine, having long hair like a woman. And even though she felt strangely safe and happy in the presence of this wicked and effete young man, she couldn't deny that those traits made him suspicious - at least, everyone said that, so it must be true.

 "There, that's right!" the girl in the Bedouin dress smiled. "Come, we've not long to go. Incidentally, my name is Maryam, and what's yours? Hawwa? That's such a beautiful name, almost as beautiful as you are!"

Hawwa would never think that anyone who looks like Maryam would find her, Hawwa, beautiful. Maryam had unusually fair skin and bright blue eyes. Her hair fell down from the emerald veil on her head. She seemed to be about as old as Hawwa.

"And your clothes - they look so unusual, but I like them! You say half of the city is dressed like this? Well, I don't know much of the city, but I must know more!" She laughed. Hawwa winced - she had never heard a girl laugh so loudly before.

"Come, Hawwa, take my hand!"

Together the girls headed towards the door behind the fallen beast who couldn't stop them anymore. Maryam sighed wistfully, looking at the serpent, and went around his body instead of stepping over its flaccid rings. Hawwa followed her example. She thought that maybe the serpent was helping Maryam in the same way the dog was going to help Hawwa. Even the best friends could turn on you, it seemed.

The door led to a room which was surprisingly nice and cozy. There was a carpet on the floor and a soft couch with a couple of armchairs around it. The room most resembled someone's parlor. The sight of the carpet awoke unpleasant memories in Hawwa, but certainly not in Maryam.

"You look tired, Hawwa! Let's rest!" Hawwa didn't mind at all, but found necessary to remind her companion that danger lurked everywhere. "Come now, no one is going to attack us in here! Sit down!"

Hawwa obeyed. To her surprise, the couch did not have teeth, did not fall into the earth, and the pattern of the carpet didn't come alive this time. The girl looked around. The walls, the furniture and the carpet were all nice, soft shades of yellow, red and orange. Tapestries with calligraphies on them decorated the walls. Those must be the famous dust tapestries, Hawwa decided. As far as she could make out the lettering, those were all quotes from the Qur'an.

Maryam seemed to be very excited at having found someone to talk to. She kept asking questions about the city and Hawwa's family, and the other girl was happy to oblige. Maryam's Bedouin family must have come to the city only recently, and the girl couldn't have known much of it. Hawwa didn't ask Maryam about her family in turn because she probably wouldn't have heard of them , anyway - Bedouins weren't exactly her family's milieu. Hawwa wanted to ask Maryam how she ended up in Arzumanian's shop but decided that it could wait. It was so nice to simply sit there and talk with Maryam of familiar, reliable things that she didn't want to speak or think of the bad stuff for now.

"So you're rich? Have you any help?" Maryam kept chattering. "Say, would your mother take me in as a servant? I can do anything - clean, sew..."

Why not, Hawwa thought. She promised Maryam to put in a word for her.

"Then I'll be seeing you every day! How wonderful! Will your father send you to the university? Can I also go? I'll be working for you, and you'll be preparing me for the university! So, it's decided! Splendid! And then I'll marry your brother, and we'll become sisters? You have no brother? That's strange, but you must have a cousin, then? So, I'll marry your cousin! Oh, Hawwa, I'm so happy!"

Maryam hugged Hawwa. It was so unexpected that Hawwa didn't even have time to hug her back, as Maryam almost at once grasped the other girl's hand and pulled her up:

"There, we must keep going."

 Following her Hawwa crossed the room and left it to find herself in a winter garden. It was surprisingly spacious and looked more like a small park. A glass dome hung over the girls' heads, or at least Hawwa thought it was made of glass. as both dome and the walls were covered in vines and shoots. Strange white flowers grew on those vines. The flowers were glowing. Luckily there was enough of them that one could see everything clearly in their light. In the middle of the garden there stood a small fountain surrounded by rose bushes. The fountain seemed to have gone out long ago. As Maryam saw the roses, she gasped, ran up to them, cut off one of the red roses and gave it to Hawwa:

"Here, please take it as a symbol of our friendship."

Hawwa was very touched.  She thanked Maryam and tucked the flower behind her hatband.

"Can I ask you for something in return?" Maryam said. "Could I take a lock of your hair as a souvenir?"

Hawwa was a little put off by this request, but agreed - after all, there was nothing out of ordinary about it, she heard people sometimes do that. Very carefully Maryam cut off a black and slightly wavy lock of Hawwa's hair that fell down to her shoulders. She put the hair and the knife on the edge of the basin to coil the hair properly and put it away and looked up for a moment, only to find that Hawwa had already gone off to somewhere.

"Wait a moment! Where are you going?" Maryam cried and ran after the other girl further into the garden. She was so sure they were alone in the house that she left the knife and the hair at the edge of the basin without a second thought.

Hawwa was going to do what had been on her mind ever since they entered the winter garden - to try and part the vines to see what was outside and if they could break the glass or leave through some other means. The walls were overgrown so thickly that she couldn't see anything but finally the girls managed to find a small opening between the vines. It was pitch black outside - apparently, the strange white flowers were the only source of light in the winter garden. But when Hawwa's eyes adjusted to the darkness a little, she could make out something that looked an awful lot like barb wire.

"How strange..." Maryam could also see it, it seemed. Hawwa looked at her disappointed face. Suddenly she remembered Georges' guess as to the Arzumanian's fate and wanted to share them with Maryam when she heard Georges himself say:

"Good day. What did I miss?"

  
***  
Luckily for Georges, the height from which he fell when the hidden trapdoor opened was very small. He rose to his feet instantly and looked around. He was in a small library. Six bookcases lined the walls. "Well, I botched being a hero," he thought, "but at least, now I'm finally in my element. After all, nothing bad ever happens in a library."

Just as he thought this, he heard a rustling of paper and a sound of footsteps behind the middle bookcase from the left. Then a bone-thin red hand, the sight of which was well familiar to Georges, lay on the bookcase's edge. He had nowhere to hide from the ghoul except behind the last bookcase and the wall. So he did, hoping that it would work.

He was hearing the footsteps - the beast was walking among the bookshelves, and its hideous shadow was inevitably approaching. Georges closed his eyes and prepared to die, when suddenly he heard squealing and gurgling laughter. He slowly opened his eyes and saw the ghoul - it was she who was making those sounds upon seeing Georges. She produced a bouquet of paper roses from behind her back and offered it to the young man, greeting him with her exclamations of joy.

Georges froze, astonished. His heart sank with half tenderness, half disgust. But his common sense told him that accepting the bouquet would be better than making an enemy of the ghoul. So Georges tried to smile, rose to his feet, bowed to the beast and took her bouquet. She started to clap her unnaturally large hands, clicking her tongue and whistling. Georges tried to think of something nice to say to her, though he wasn't sure she would understand.

"Thank you, my lady. The color of your skin is that of... er... newly-made bricks, and your teeth are as sharp as your intellect."  
  
Apparently, the compliment, or maybe the tone it was delivered in (the tone one uses with very small children or animals), was to the ghoul's tastes. She kept screeching with joy but still wouldn't leave, unable to take her loving eyes off Georges. Unable to think of anything else, he overcame his distaste and kissed her right hand.  
  
This drove the ghoul to such happiness that Georges thought he would go deaf. She came ever nearer to the young man and stroke his hair. He froze, waiting and terrified. The ghoul carefully wrapped a lock of his dark and slightly wavy hair around her thin finger and suddenly, with unexpected force ripped it out. Georges gasped for breath, trying his best not to scream with pain. The ghoul kissed the lock of his hair and pressed it to her heart. Walking backwards, not wanting to take her eyes off him, she backed off to the wall, walked tight through it and disappeared.

Georges took a deep breath and swore quietly, then waited a little more, but there was no sound in the library, and no one else appeared. He looked closer at the three flowers in his hands and saw that they were made of folded yellowish paper, covered with someone's handwriting. Before reading them, Georges decided to briefly examine the library.

There was nothing particularly unexpected on the shelves - books on grammar, history and theology, volumes of medieval poetry, a few translations of the old European authors and a couple of textbooks on economics. The only exit out of the library was a ladder leading up to a hatch in the ceiling. Georges also tried to pass through the wall, but it didn't work.

He looked into that passage between the two bookcases where the ghoul had appeared from and saw a book, or rather a thick notebook, on the floor. It was all torn up, barely any pages had been left intact, and those that were didn't have any writing on them. The unfortunate creature couldn't have known what the letters were; she probably decided it was some sort of intricate pattern, and chose the prettiest pages, that is, the ones that had the most writing on them. Arzumanian's name and the date - 196...-7... - were handwritten on the flyleaf.

"So that's his diary!" Georges thought happily. "She folded those flowers out of the pages of his diary! All of it was worth it, after all. I have to read those."

He carefully unfolded the first rose and read:

  
_..._ _assume man has acknowledged that he is God with all the power that entails, the power over life and death in particular. What then? Now, death is simple. The common folk like to write amulets, to ward off the evil eye and so on._ _One could write one such amulet with a date and a cause of death and place it under the subject's pillow, sew it into the lining of his clothes, hang on its neck, if it's an animal. But what to do with life?_

_We, the calligraphers, have invented the idea to make images of flowers, birds, beasts, even people - a whirling dervish, say - out of letters, to circumvent the taboo of portraying living creatures. Some further investigation along this line may prove productive._

  
"Interesting," Georges thought. "Absolutely insane, but interesting."

The second rose read:  
  
_The book is almost finished, but some doubt still lingers. What if something happens to it? Making even one duplicate will take up too much of my time and energy, and I cannot entrust this job to anyone else. I have one idea, but..._

   
"He must mean "The Book of Life and Death", or whatever it's called," Georges decided. "His final work. He was right, from what I saw, the only thing left of the book was the binding. Well, I did know about the book already, but still, what idea he might have had?"

The third and last page read:  
  
_Don't know why, but I can't stop thinking of him lately. I used to have a Turkish apprentice, his name was Aziz Kaya,_ _a pretty boy. He had fair hair and blue eyes, just like my mother. I think the Turk who violated her sister before drenching her in gasoline and setting her on fire was also named Kaya. I wonder if they're related? There are a lot of Kayas among the Turks, but I still like to think they are related. It makes beating him with a liner, forcing him to go to bed with me and threatening to throw him out on the streets otherwise that much more pleasant._  
  
"What is this..." Georges almost threw the paper aside in disgust, but suddenly something stopped him. The woman with fair hair and blue eyes... He understood now what it was that he found so strange in that girl in the emerald dress. She was dressed after the Bedouin's fashion, but had no trace of their accent, on the contrary, her speech would be strangely clean and bookish even in an urban child.

All of a sudden the pages out of the calligrapher's diary, the strange behavior on part of that serpent Georges killed as well as the cryptic announcement about a work that was trying to escape came together and formed one terrible idea. But how to guess it? Georges reached for the pocket of his trousers and found a lighter (took a lighter, but forgot to buy cigars, would you look at that). Of course, he could just burn the girl... no, the book, and if she still wanted to cut him, he probably would have to. But he would hardly bring himself to, knowing what he knew now. Besides, didn't the announcement said to cause no significant harm to the final calligraphy?

 At any rate, he couldn't afford to lose a minute now. He had to catch up with the girls and... do something. He will act according to the circumstances.

He climbed the ladder to the hatch, and the hatch opened by itself, without a sound. Georges was surprised to discover that the hatch opened inside the basin of an empty fountain that stood in the middle of a garden under a glass dome. In any other case he would have wondered who on earth built a library under a fountain, but not in this place.

Quiet voices sounded further in the park. With a strange combination of joy and terror Georges recognized the voices of Hawwa and the other girl. Next to his hand at the edge of the basin he noticed a pocket knife and a lock of dark and slightly wavy hair that looked too much like Hawwa's hair. Georges shuddered. He grasped the knife and the hair, hiding the latter in his pocket, and hurried in the direction of the voices.

  
***

"You?!" Maryam cried. She still wasn't happy to see Georges. Hawwa, on the other hand, felt like a weight had been taken off her heart. Now that Georges was here, safe and sound, she didn't have to feel that guilt that had been present all this time in spite of her prejudice against the young man. Yet she still felt it, a little.

"Hello," Georges said to Maryam, "hi, Hawwa. Demoiselle..."

"My name is Maryam!"

 "Maryam, my name is Georges, and I would like to apologize. I have killed your friend, not knowing that he was your friend. I only wanted to protect you and..."

"Apologize?!" Maryam cried. "Do you really think one could simply come back and apologize for taking a life, for destroying a work of art, and be forgiven?! Of course, you didn't know, but how can I now forgive you? Let us just forget everything now. It's not as if I could forbid you from going after us, and so on. And Hawwa is happy to see you, she's been worried sick about you. Speaking of which, Hawwa, where is your hair? I've cut it off to weave it into my new tapestry, after all."

Maryam turned their back on them and ran up to the fountain. "We would have to stop in my weaving room, so that I... What's that? Where is it? Where is my knife?!"

She turned and faced Georges who was holding said knife in his hand - before that he was apparently hiding it in his sleeve.

"Your weaving room?" he said.

"Yes! I live and work here! This is my father's house, and mine! Put that knife down immediately!" Maryam was screaming.

Her father's, Hawwa wondered?

"Yes, my father's!  Master Arzumanian is my father, I've never seen him, but I must find... Argh!" Having turned to Hawwa for a moment, Maryam allowed Georges to grasp one of her braids and cut it off with the knife, which turned out surprisingly easy. When cut, it made a sound of paper rustling and fell to pieces. The pieces fell to the ground and turned out to be letters which spelled: "...inside man, and every man is God." All three fell silent.

 "What does it mean?" Maryam whispered.

"It seems we've found the final and best Arzumanian's work," Georges said, "that's to say, Maryam, also known as "The Book of Life and Death". Hawwa, I need..."

"No! I'm human! And my father is no heretic! This is all sorcery! You are the sorcerer, I knew it! I didn't like you from the start!" Maryam cried. Georges for some reason reached for his pocket. Taking the opportunity, Maryam hit him on the arm and caught the knife when he dropped it. Georges then sprung aside, took out his flask and threw wine on Maryam's legs. They quickly became so damp she couldn't move anymore, but Georges still moved even further aside so that she coulnd't reach him at all.

"That should keep you for a bit," Georges said, exhaling. Then he shouted, raising his voice so that it wouldn't get drowned out by Maryam's wailing: "Hawwa, where's the exit?"

Without saying anything, Hawwa quickly ran to the door at the other end of the winter garden with Georges in tow. The girl ran fast so that she had no time to look back.


	4. Samson and Delilah

After slamming the door behind themselves, Georges and Hawwa waited a few seconds. After they were sure nothing was going to attack them again, Georges turned to Hawwa:

"Hawwa, I need to tell you something."

He relayed the contents of the calligrapher's diary to her, leaving out the bits about the Arzumanian's aunt and Aziz Kaya, of course. Hawwa in turn told him what was happening while he was gone. Georges nodded thoughtfully:

"Barb wire, hmm... So we have to look for another exit, although we would hardly have been able to break the glass, anyway. Indeed, Maryam is a rather gifted individual, almost as gifted as her... father. If only she wasn't trying to murder me all the time... No, Hawwa, I'm not sure since when she's lived here, either, seeing how she's had time to weave everything we've seen, yet says she's never seen the calligrapher. But, like I said - time passes differently here. I think Arzumanian was only murdered this night. But for Maryam, it could have been years. At any rate, we've done what the announcement asked - detained her whilst causing no significant harm to her. It's out of our hands now. We have time to get out of here, while she is getting dry." He took out his lighter. "If you don't mind, I'm going to burn the notes of this accursed man. It's disgusting to even hold them."

Georges took the lock of Hawwa's hair out of his pocket, too.

"Is this your hair?" he asked the girl. "...She did, didn't she. I heard that human hair are often used in sorcery. I don't suppose you know the story of Samson and Delilah? The great strength of Samson the Judge was concealed in his hair. To rob him of his strength, his... er, his wife Delilah wove his hair into a loom, but it didn't work. Then she just shaved him, and he became as weak as a kitten. He then was blinded and mocked by everyone. No, Delilah wasn't evil. Judge's enemies sent her to him. She was just doing what she was told to... Yes, I do think Maryam could have been plotting to use your hair in sorcery. Stranger things have happened to us here, don't you find? At any rate, I'll burn your hair as well, if you don't mind."

While Georges was doing that, Hawwa was examining the room around them, even though there wasn't much to examine. Opposite the entrance there was another door, on which hung a large combination lock. It had a whole seven disks with numbers. The doorless walls were decorated with calligraphies in glass picture frames - three calligraphies on either wall. This time the calligraphies weren't shaped to resemble anyone or anything, they were just cloud of letters. In the corner of every frame there was a tag with a red letter. Other than that, the room was empty.

"Please, don't take it the wrong way," Georges said, putting away his lighter and approaching Hawwa, "but you scare me sometimes. You speak so rarely and so little, but mostly you're just silent. You barely even smile. It seems nothing ever affects you, and even in the worst moments you just fall over without a word. ...yes, of course, we both are in some way to blame for ending up here, and there is no use in crying, indeed, but that wasn't what I really meant, you see. ...alright, forget it. I'll explain later, as for now, we have a lock to open."

After a closer examination Hawwa noticed the words scratched on the door next to the lock: _From here rightwards and in a circle, note the red letters._

"I recognize the handwriting," Georges noticed humorlessly. "You think we have to enter the numbers according to each letter's position in the alphabet? That's the code, you think? Hmm, I doubt it could be that simple. But let's try, of course."

Hawwa made a round of all calligraphies, memorized the sequence of the letters - _ba', dal, alif, alif_ again _, lam_ and _ṭ_ _a -_ and returned to the door. She entered the resulting code - 2-4-1-1-12-9 - but nothing happened.

"I have an idea," Georges said. "Before we had letters, we used alphabet letters instead, and their gematrical value wasn't always the same as their position in the alphabet. Please, let me do it, I seem to remember..."

He changed a couple of numbers. Now the code looked like this: 24-11-309. There was a clicking sound from the lock.

 " _Voil_ _à_ ," Georges said. "Does the code mean anything? I've no idea. But at least in one of the calligraphies I recognized the quote from al-Hallaj ( _By You and by me I'm astonished..._ ), so it may be a date from his life. Maybe, the date of execution? But even if it is, it's according to your calendar." He sighed. "I don't like it all... Alright, let's go."

They opened the door and entered, only to see the weaving loom with a half-finished tapestry. On the other side of the loom Maryam was facing them with the knife in her hand.

"Indeed," Georges said, "time passes differently here."

"Hold still!" Maryam cried. She was making weeping and sobbing sounds, but the tears weren't flowing. There were no tears in her, just paint. She put the knife to one of the threads, the one that was of dark-brown colour. - I have her hair, her life is tied to them. One move and she dies!

Georges and Hawwa stopped dead.

"What is happening?" Georges whispered, barely audibly, what Hawwa was thinking.

"I have found your hair, finally," Maryam said. Her legs had already dried, it seemed, but she still was wavering a little, as if she had a hard time standing on them - or maybe it was because she was weeping. "Some foul red thing was stealing away with it, but I threatened her with my knife, and she abandoned it. I cannot imagine what she was, I have never seen her before."

Maryam's last words brought back the memories of her past, and she staggered again. Now she was looking into nowhere, as if talking to herself:

"I've always thought my father and I were worthy people. I dreamt of leaving this house and finding him, and living with him together out there, where our craft would be appreciated. But now he's a heretic, and I'm no human at all. So what? He has no relation to me, I am my own person. I'm not a thing, not a means to his end. If I consider myself a person, I am one." She looked at Hawwa. "I am leaving regardless, and I am killing your friend who likes to ruin the work of others either way. But I will give _you_ a choice. If I mean anything to you, abandon him, and we'll leave together. If not, I will kill you, as well, and leave by myself. So? Will you follow me?"

"Hawwa..." Georges whispered next to her.

 Hawwa didn't listen. She wasn't going to betray Georges a second time, and besides, she did see him burn her hair, unlike Maryam, and definitely remembered that the ghoul didn't manage to snatch a single hair of hers. Therefore she had nothing to fear, and Maryam was clearly bluffing.

"No," she answered.

"Well... Let it be your way, then," and Maryam cut the thread with the pocket knife.

Georges staggered and fell to his knee. Maryam stood still. Hawwa ran to him.

"Forgive me," he said, in a stifled whisper. "It was my hair... I had no idea that..."

He fell to the floor, now silent completely.

"What... no... why?!" Maryam cried. Hawwa quickly reached for Georges' pocket where the lighter was, trying not to think about the fact that she's touching another man's thigh. She had managed to find the lighter and clench it in her fist just in time. Maryam had left her weaving loom and ran to the other two as fast as her legs let her.

"I don't... why... could it have been... Hawwa... Hawwa, what are you saying? You knew? You knew all this time? You did this... Oh, of course, of course you did it on purpose, how could I ever think... You could never stand him, either, could you? Yes, yes, of course, let us leave, that is right... What... what are you doing? No... No!!!"

Hawwa set Maryam on fire and jumped to the side at once. She tried to lead the book as far away from the loom and Georges as possible, as she expected her to thrash around in agony, but that didn't happen. Maryam quickly shriveled in the flames, she barely even screamed - after the first few seconds she didn't have anything to scream with. She fell to the stone floor at once, for her legs shriveled greatly and almost at once, she rolled there from side to side a couple of times, and then there was nothing left of her but a little pile of ashes and the knife upon it. Finally all was quiet.

Hawwa approached the loom The unfinished tapestry depicted a red rose. The thread woven out of Georges' hair wasn't quite cut, one hair was still intact. Could it be that not all was lost?

Hawwa ran to Georges, opened her pocket mirror and held it next to the young man's lips. The reflective surface grew slightly foggy - he was breathing, although just barely. Hawwa called out for him, slapped him across the face, even tried to dash the wine out of his flask over his face, but it was no use. Georges did not respond. He was still alive, but only just.

Hawwa saw that she could not help him and that from now on, she was on her own. She rose, put the lighter in her pocket, took the knife from the pile of ashes and freely exited the weaving room.

 


	5. Orders From The Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (to be continued yet, stay tuned)

The room that Hawwa now entered was almost definitely the last one, yet it wasn't a hallway, but rather a sleeping room. In any other house that would be strange, but nothing surprised the girl now.

The room was spacious and cool. There was a soft carpet on the floor which silenced the sound of footsteps. The bed under the canopy was wide, and there was incense burning to the both sides of it.

The sight of the bed reminded Hawwa of how weary she was. In the last few... hours? days? - in a word, during the whole time she had been here she only sat down once - on the floor in the room where she met Georges - and didn't lay down once, except for fainting and falling down. The bed looked awfully tempting and smooth, and Hawwa sat down on the edge.

It was so wide that not only the girl, but even her mother or father would be able to fit crosswise. Even Georges would. Hawwa was looking at and touching the pillows and the blanket. She was reminded of her own house, her own bedroom and bed. It seemed impossible that it all used to be hers, and still was hers. It seemed impossible that there was a time in her life when there was nothing but books, school, prayers and sometimes excursions to the city with her parents - and no bloodstains on the floor in an abandoned shop, no monsters made of inked letters, no hair cut in two.

The pillows seemed to smell of perfume. Hawwa thought that her mother used the same perfume, or a very similar one. Barely conscious of what she was doing, she lowered her head onto the pillow and closed her eyes, breathing in. At least, Georges' body should probably be carried in here. Let him lie on this pretty-looking bed instead of the floor. But how would Hawwa carry him? If she drew, or rather wrote, a hearse under him, would it become real then? Supposing it would, she probably wouldn't be able to pull it, though. Alright, but what if she drew a mule, or an engine?...

Thinking in this way, Hawwa didn't even notice that she was dozing off. She still sensed the softness of the pillow under her cheek, the smell of the perfume and the incense, but she was dreaming at the same time. In her dream, she sat in the patio of her home, behind a tea table, among the rose bushes. Her mother and father were also sitting with her. The sun was shining, but it wasn't too hot - it must have been early in the morning.

_I'm about to fall asleep_ , Hawwa thought. _I need to get up_. But she thought at once, arguing with herself: _I'm still understanding it's just a dream, am I not? I can get up at any time. I'm tired, I'll just lie down for a moment._

Her father was reading a fresh newspaper with a barely visible frown.  Her mother meanwhile was looking through the morning post: "A letter from my cousin on my mother's side... a letter from the uncle... no news, it says, but still. The main thing is that we don't forget each other. And what is this?... Now, would you look at that."

She fell silent, then looked at her daughter and smiled strangely:

"It seems this one is for you, dear. But I don't know who it's from - it's not written here."   


_"Time to get up. It's dangerous in here. There are ghouls, ink beasts and who knows, what else."_

_"No, just a little more"_ , again Hawwa was arguing with herself.

_"Those bad men who shot the calligrapher, who made him bleed - they can return at any time."_

_"Just a little. I want to know what the letter says."_

Hawwa took the letter from her mother and opened the envelope.

"Young lady Hawwa,

I see it my duty to inform you that your world is becoming unsafe. Your most honorable father who reads the newspapers and knows many men of rank and knowledge would readily confirm the same, not that you haven't seen with your own eyes what had been done to the calligrapher. Therefore I dare suggest that you and your noble family would move to The Other Place that is far safer and more pleasant..."

_It's time to get up_ , Hawwa thought.

"...If you do agree to my proposal which is, I assure you, driven exclusively by my genuine concern about your fate, just write your name in the empty space in the line below and send the letter back to me. I shall hurry to your aid without any delay..."

_Now it's definitely time to get up._

"...Yours sincerely, mister Death."

The line below read: "I, ___ , hereby give my consent to emigration."

"What is it? And who send it?" Hawwa's mother asked. Her father also raised his eyes.

_Why am I not getting up?_

"No one," Hawwa answered. "It's all just a dream."

And she opened her eyes.

At first it seemed to her that the bedroom hadn't changed. But once she had taken a look, she noticed that the incense wasn't burning anymore, and there was fresh soil on the carpet. When Hawwa sat up, she found there was a sheet of paper on her chest.

It was the same letter from mister Death she had read in her dream.

She ought to have burnt it, but she didn't feel like it. Having destroyed Arzumanian's book, this unique living calligraphy, was enough for today. Who else had such a rarity -a letter from Death himself? No harm could come from simply keeping it.

It was time to leave. Hawwa folded the sheet carefully, hid it in her pocket and headed for the door across the room. She was right - the bedroom indeed was the last room in the house. The door opened into a rocky tunnel. It led downwards. Stairs were crudely hewn in the rock.

...


End file.
